


Sanctuary

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Clones, F/F, F/M, Genderswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 00:39:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day the alarms go off, Axel breaks three people out of the facility. Namine is the first, a girl named Xion is the second, and a boy named Roxas is the third.</p><p>Her first glimpse of the sun is quickly followed by her first glimpse of a cleaver buried in someone's skull.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> For Femslash February, Ravewalker asked for Larxene/Namine/Xion or any grouping of those three. My brain gave me zombie apocalypse with a side helping of clones and also, lady Axel. Yay?

The world is bigger than she expected. As luck would have it, it's also far more dangerous.  
  
Namine doesn't remember her childhood and honestly, she's not even sure if she ever really _had_ one. As far as she's concerned, she may have been created fully grown that very first day—thirteen and scrawny, lanky blonde hair and a white hospital gown that barely covered her thighs. She doesn't think about it much, whether she was a homeless kid that the CDC snatched off the streets and turned into a blank slate or if she's another of their clones. It upsets her, so she ignores it—focuses on the crayons and blank paper that they put in front of her and just _creates_.  
  
They use her as a test subject, injecting diseases and viruses and who knows what else into her bloodstream daily. As far as she knows, she's the only subject to survive so long.  
  
The list of things that she knows about herself has next to nothing on it. The only reason she even has a name is because of Axel, the only other person in the facility who cared enough to not continuously call her Subject 3701. She doesn't know if Namine was originally her name or if the other woman gave it to her. Axel had just looked at her one day, her badge pinned to her labcoat and huffed loudly, drumming her nails against the clipboard. "Everyone deserves to have a name," she'd said, and from then on, Namine had one.  
  
.  
  
The day the alarms go off, Axel breaks three people out of the facility.  
  
Namine is the first, a girl named Xion is the second, and a boy named Roxas is the third.  
  
Her first glimpse of the sun is quickly followed by her first glimpse of a cleaver buried in someone's skull.  
  
.  
  
Apparently all three of them are immune to the zombie virus—the only three subjects who'd survived the testing. Axel takes them all to a bunker in the middle of the woods that smells of rotten flesh and explains the project they'd been involved in—how the CDC had first taken them to create biological weapons and how, after the first batch had exceeded their expectations and promptly escaped into the real world, they'd turned to reversing the process—using the subjects who had stubbornly stayed human to try to turn the zombies back.  
  
She doesn't understand very much, but she knows enough to be aware of three things. One, they're important, two, Axel had broken them out before they were scheduled to be shot in the back of the head, and three, though they were immune, Axel was not.  
  
.  
  
It's eerie sometimes, how similar the three of them are. They all share the same bone structure—the same heart shaped face and childlike cheeks, the same blue eyes, the same stature and weight. The only difference between the three of them are the color of their hair. Where Namine's hair is a blonde so pale it's nearly white, Roxas' hair is more of a golden color, and Xion's is dark as night.  
  
It makes her feel like a part of a matched set, trudging through a decaying world with a scientist who's bleeding heart is going to get her killed and two teenagers who share her DNA.  
  
.  
  
The other two adapt a system, taking to the role as Axel's self appointed protectors so well that it makes her stomach flip. They learn how to use guns and blades—taking bites for her when they're unavoidable and ignoring the way Axel glares at them afterwards, like she's upset that she's still alive.  
  
Namine isn't blind, she at least knows that Axel isn't upset that she's _alive_ —she's angry that her continued existence causes them pain.  
  
The three of them curl around Axel at night like a protective circle of bodies, ignoring her when she sighs and insists that she's supposed to protect _them_.

  
.  
  
"Why don't you try to learn?" Xion asks one day, decapitating a stumbling corpse in one smooth motion. Namine glances at her, an eyebrow raised and displays the knife that Axel had given her weeks ago.  
  
Axel and Roxas are both a few feet away from them, defending themselves back to back, like they were made to do this. For the first time in weeks, Axel can't hear what they're saying, too far away and too caught up in trying to stay alive.  
  
"I'm not made for this," she shrugs, because she wasn't. She was made to sit in a room and draw until her wrist started hurting, presumably created for her mind rather than her brawn. She doesn't have the muscle that Xion and Roxas were both created with, her limbs like limp noodles. The first time she'd really tried to kill something, she'd nearly taken out Xion's eye.  
  
Xion is quiet, like she's pondering the same thing.  
  
They don't say anything else, but that night, Xion sleeps with her head pillowed on Namine's thigh, like maybe she thinks that Namine needs protecting too.  
  
.  
  
At this point, Namine's convinced that the world is not all it's cracked up to be. She's not great with weapons, which means that her worth in the middle of an apocalypse is significantly less than the others around her. She tells Axel this one day when Roxas is sleeping off a particularly nasty bite, Xion pacing back and forth before the door with a blade in hand.  
  
Axel gives her a flat look and sets a hand on her shoulder, peering at her through messy red bangs. "Never think that you're worth less than the rest of us," she says, squeezing Namine's shoulder.  
  
"But—"  
  
"I don't want to hear it. Every person is different and you might not be like Xion or Roxas or even me, but you're _you_. That's enough. Everyone has worth."  
  
.  
  
They're nineteen years old and have been out in the world for a year and a half the first time that Axel gets really hurt. It's nothing as serious as a bite, but there's a nasty wound in her side from where she'd fallen on a rusty pipe when a pack had rushed them. It isn't a bite, but it has it's own dangers, and Axel hisses curses as she clutches her side, blood slicking her fingers.  
  
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, what I wouldn't give for a tetanus shot right now," she growls as Roxas tentatively prods between her fingers. "Fuck!" she adds.  
  
"Can we bandage it?" Roxas asks her, face as concerned as Namine has ever seen it.  
  
Axel sighs. "Sure we can, kid. It might still get infected, but we can hope for the best."  
  
She flashes him a grin and he flinches. "What can we do?" he asks, voice small.  
  
"Unless you can break into the nearest hospital and get me a shot, we just have to wait."  
  
"We can do that," Xion says, spine ramrod straight. There's a streak of black blood across her cheek, her mouth set in a flat line. "Let me and Roxas go, Namine can stay with you—"  
  
"No," Axel sighs. "I'm not letting you risk it."  
  
.  
  
"We're going," Roxas tells her later that night, when Axel is sleeping fitfully at her side. Beside him, Xion looks more like him than ever, twin determined expressions on their faces.  
  
"Do you even know what you're looking for?" Namine asks.  
  
"Do you?" Roxas fires back, teeth bared in her direction.  
  
"More than you would."  
  
He glares at her for a moment before turning to Xion. "Take her with you, I'll stay with Axel. It might be safer that way anyway."  
  
"Okay," is all Xion says, shouldering her bag and tossing Namine a handgun. "The nearest hospital isn't too far, but I'll need you to have my back in a fight."  
  
.  
  
When a walker nearly tears through Xion's throat on the way back, Namine's hands are steady on the gun. The hole in the zombie's forehead is neat.  
  
Xion stares at her. "I told you I'd have your back," she shrugs.

.  
  
Sometimes, Namine wonders who she would have been if she hadn't been a clone in a lab—if she would have been a normal girl whose biggest concern was what to wear to school or what her crush thought of her. Would she still have made it through this? Or would she be one of the walking dead? At nineteen years old, she feels both like she's been alive for centuries and like she was born yesterday.  
  
She watches Axel smile at Roxas, watch her kiss the very tip of his nose—his ears going red when she smiles.  
  
Xion gives her a look over their heads, one of those 'god, why can't they just get a room' looks that she's perfected since Axel and Roxas started giving each other lovey dovey looks. Namine flashes her a small smile, getting to her feet and dusting off the back of her skirt.  
  
Xion sends her a puzzled glance when Namine reaches for her hand and drags her out the door. Safely outside, Namine gives her an embarrassed smile. "I think they need a little privacy right now," she explains.  
  
.  
  
"Do you ever think of who we could have been?" she asks Xion, swinging her legs out over the bridge. Beside her, Xion is shredding a dandelion apart, her fingers sticky with the juices from the stem.  
  
"Sure," Xion shrugs. "But we'd probably all be dead without the immunity."  
  
"Axel isn't."  
  
"Axel has something that most people don't—she has us."  
  
They're both quiet for a moment, watching the stream beneath them. "It's pretty out here," Xion says after a few moments, reaching for Namine's hand. "The world is so much _bigger_ than I'd ever thought, and it's scary, but I think it's worth it in the end."  
  
Xion's hand is sticky and kind of gross, but Namine threads their fingers together anyway.  
  
It's worth it.


End file.
